Amber Skies
by Oceanbourne
Summary: If there's one thing the winds have told me, it's that the skies should be blue. But the leaders of Zaun simply turn a blind eye, refusing to acknowledge the colors on the canvas that don't belong.


The trains were running late again.

They were just another addition to the list of problems which plagued Zaun, a backlog of issues which the government chose to simply let slide under the rug and hope their population wouldn't notice. If anyone did muster up the courage to speak up against their negligence - well, Viktor's laboratory never turned down new bodies for experimenting.

It looked like I couldn't escape the lethargic environment today, as I became used to the extra five minutes I normally had before the nine o'clock evening train actually left the station and I was really pushing the envelope tonight. That last shopkeeper refused to budge an inch on the labeled price for the bag of oranges I needed to get, no matter how hard I tried to persuade him.

"You sure you can't take off a few gold pieces for me?" I had asked him in as sweet of a voice i could muster up. "I'd be ever so grateful if you could help a girl in need."

The rigid expression on his face said it all - I'd have more luck trying to move a monolith with my words. By the end of the discussion, after an endless tirade of my coaxing and tugging, he had finally relented, more to finally get me off his case rather than him actually being affected by any charm I might have imprinted on him. I still wasn't sure if I preferred to deal with the robots or the perverts. I felt much more comfortable around the former, even though it was more difficult to actually get them to do what I wanted, while the other type of shopkeeper always made me feel like I had gone to do grocery shopping in the red light district. The false act I had to put on, even though I always knocked them unconscious in the end before they could actually do anything to me, made me feel dirty. Having to rearrange the body to look like they were simply napping on the job was an extra bonus.

Zaunite society had become almost entirely binary, having to deal with the lesser of two evils even when just performing everyday chores. After having lived in Piltover for only half a year, I had already lost the feel of the Zaunite streets, the look of the orange-tinted skies, the chemically altered air feeling so foreign to my skin even though I had survived almost six years on the streets. Yet somehow it felt more natural to be out here in this imperfect atmosphere rather than being constantly lauded as a celebrity every time I appeared in public on the streets of the City of Progress. I guess my exodus from Zaun led to a choice between two evils, too. On these streets I had to keep my face hidden under this hood so that no one would recognize me, but in Piltover there was no escaping the fanbase who loyally tracked me from one meeting on my agenda to another. I knew they meant well, and I never had the heart to lash out at them for their constant trailing, but unless I had specific help from the Piltover police force to escort me somewhere under the prying eyes of the media, it was always _Janna, what about this?_ or _Janna, over here!,_ chanting my name like a word in some arcane ritual and what I wouldn't give for everyone to just -

"Last call for the nine o'clock train," the overhead voice announced, breaking me out of my reverie. I managed to slip through the doors as they began to close and panted a sigh of relief as I took a handhold on the metal bar which ran vertically from the roof of the train to the floor, the oranges held secure with my other hand.

"It would've been a shame for you to miss the train," the only other occupant of the train car spoke up. In my haste to make it safely aboard, I hadn't taken stock of my surroundings. Taking up the entirety of the bench across from me, with a body that literally stretched to the ceiling, was a familiar green gelatinous mass.

"Zac!" I greeted the Secret Weapon enthusiastically, but then quieted down as I instinctively scanned the surroundings. Realizing that there were no prying eyes who would notice our conversation, I relaxed. "It's good to see you again."

"It must be tough, having to walk around with a disguise in your hometown," the blob commiserated.

I shrugged. "I don't mind it too much, especially since I never had too many friends to see whenever I visit here. Besides, any meeting we'd have would never be in public anyways."

"You are right about that," Zac agreed. "I guess this train car is a lot cleaner than the sewers and dark alleyways from the last time we ran into each other, huh?"

I had to laugh at the memory, recalling a particularly unfortunate run-in with a couple of street thugs who had seen a little too much of me when the wind had blown off my hood. They had chased me down into an alley, but as luck would have had it, the nearest manhole cover had opened up and Zac had emerged from it after a meeting with Twitch. And he wasn't created to be a weapon for nothing - even though every suspicious character in Zaun carried some sort of hextech weapon, he absorbed their bullets like they were nothing and chased them off with the threat of being encased within him when he began his cell division. I've always wondered what that sensation would feel like, but decided it'd be better off not to share that thought with Zac.

"Yeah, I suppose so. Have they fixed up that one clogged up passageway on Seventh Street yet?" I inquired. His unusual friendship with the one sentient sewer rat of Zaun made Zac well aware of the underground street plan of the city, and a central crossroads in the maze had somehow become obstructed as an aftereffect of some ridiculous experiment which filled the particular manhole with a giant goop of organic matter. Zac had reported the inconvenience to the city council, but due to its close ties to scientists like Singed who had denied all responsibility for the incident, his plea never made any headway.

"Nah, I haven't heard a word back from them," he said sadly, and I frowned. So nothing's changed here since the last time I had left. It was unbelievable to conceive, how the city's techmaturgical rival, Piltover, was leaps and bounds ahead of them in developing environmentally efficient technology even though Zaun was known for having more brilliant minds at its academies. As much as I disliked Viktor's almost barbaric tactics in his processes to create powerful machinery, I had to admit that his creations always surpassed Jayce's in their ingenuity, with the possible exception of the Mercury Hammer.

"How can this government think that it's okay to just do nothing about its own city?" I sighed with exasperation. "Don't they see that the world around them is doing its best to save the environment and that if they just keep going on this pace, Zaun will slowly choke itself to death?"

Zac shrugged his shoulders, a gesture which looked much stranger when he did it. "You know I've never been good on politics. I'm all for standing up against injustice, protecting the innocent, and all that jazz, but I don't have the way with words that others do. Ultimately, you either have to be in the hextech business or be filthy stinking rich to have a say in anything, and I'm neither of those things. I'm just a guy."

"And I'm just a girl," I lamented alongside him. "It's strange how you can just move from one place to another, and immediately the people treat you differently. Yet even with the people of Piltover, I have to wonder what they really think of me. Do they really agree with what I have to say, what I think about this world, or do they just publicize me because I'm another one of their starlets, a pretty face for their television?"

Zac thought about the matter for a long while, the outline of his body slightly rippling with the movement of the train car. "I can't speak for the rest of the world, Janna, but you're far from just a model they dress up and put on display. You support a cause that's important for the oddballs of Zaun like Twitch and me. Those mad scientists just can't be allowed to run around blowing stuff up with their beakers and Bunsen burners while the rest of society suffers from the mess they make. Haven't you done some cool things with that wind magic of yours helping Heimerdinger out with his latest invention?"

He was referencing the Galeforce 3000, a really eccentric name (as was usually the case with the yordle inventor's creations) for a machine that was intended to regulate the chemical composition of the air. We had only done the preliminary stages of work, but Heimerdinger had managed to completely purify a small space of air, probably smaller than the size of my fist, but it was some progress. "Yeah, I guess we have. It's slow going and hard work, but you've encouraged me to keep going at it, Zac." I permitted myself a small smile, as it was almost impossible to feel sad around his jovial nature. "Thanks for that."

"Always here to help, Janna." The train had stopped, and he rose up to meet the sliding doors as they opened. "Well, here's my stop, but I hope to see you around the next time you're in the neighborhood. Have a safe rest of your trip!"

I moved forward to embrace him, the gooey texture a bit strange to my skin, but I didn't mind. If I could find virtue only in peculiar characters like Zac, I'd happily give up all the changes to my appearance the magic of the wind had done for me. "Take care, Zac," I bade him farewell, remembering that I was carrying the bag of oranges and quickly drawing out a couple of the fruits to hand to him. "Right, I almost forgot. Give one to Twitch for me, will you?"

He eyed the citrus carefully, before a mischievous grin appeared on his face. "Oh, this is perfect! Thanks!" he exclaimed gratefully, taking them from my hand.

I tilted my head, wondering what he was thinking. "Oh? What did you have in mind?"

He tossed an orange in his hand as if it were a baseball. "Twitch hates oranges."

* * *

 **A/N:** look, it's another one-shot! but man, when you get ideas in your head, you just have to write them down. I also wanted to try writing from a first person perspective, so tell me how that went. There also hasn't been a story with Janna in a while, so I figured why not have this?


End file.
